


honey in the darkness

by louciferish



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Claustrophobia, F/F, Horror, Magic, Minor Original Character(s), Spooky old house, incubus Mila
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-07
Updated: 2018-09-07
Packaged: 2019-07-08 04:56:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15923324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/louciferish/pseuds/louciferish
Summary: “Hello,” she purrs and hikes up her short tunic to cross legs that are long and pale, except when Sara blinks and they twist sickeningly into something inhuman, crooked and covered in dark fur.





	honey in the darkness

**Author's Note:**

> Promotional fic for [In the Dark of Night](https://tictail.com/yoihorrorzine), a Yuri on Ice fantasy-horror zine - currently on sale.

“Are you sure you can’t stay longer?” Sara fights to keep her voice level, but the tremble creeps through.

On the steps below, Valentina and Rosa exchange a glance. It’s brief, and then Rosa tucks one dark curl behind her ear and looks away, suddenly fascinated by the rod iron railing of the porch.

“I told my boyfriend I’d be home in time for lunch,” she mumbles.

“Won’t Michele be home soon?” Valentina asks. The teasing smiles and laughter of last night are gone now. She watches Sara with shrewd eyes and an unpleasant twist to her mouth.

“Yes,” Sara begins, “but-”

“We need to go,” Valentina cuts in. Her flat tone of voice reminds Sara of her grandmother, who never had much use for excuses either. “We told you before.”

Sara sighs, forcing herself to loosen her grip on the stair rail. “Okay. Thank you both for coming. I had fun.”

Valentina only nods in response and sets off down the driveway, her heels clicking rhythmically on the pavement. As she slides into the passenger seat of the little sedan, Rosa pauses, raising one hand in farewell, and Sara waves back. Her smile probably looks real from far away. 

She keeps her hand up and watches as the car pulls away, merging into the traffic on the busy street.

Once the back of the sedan dips below the hill, Sara turns to head inside. The hinge screeches at her when she opens the door, and she winces. Didn’t Mickey say he oiled it yesterday? The front door is as stubborn as the rest of the house, old and whining and refusing to give way to progress. Sara can hear the groan and slam of the screen even in her earliest memories - running out into the yard with her brother in pursuit, until the snap of their grandmother’s voice stopped them both in their tracks.

Sara flips on the kitchen light as she enters, then walks through to the cavernous living room, turning the lamps on one by one until the house is bathed in the amber glow of shaded artificial lights. Even after all that, she can’t shake the sensation of a weight pressed between her shoulders. It crawls up the back of her neck and settles a firm grip around her throat.

Nonna is still watching. The house proclaims her presence everywhere - in the weave of the crocheted granny square blanket on the sofa, the dust on the mantle, and the acrid smell of tobacco, mildew, and urine. 

The first thing Sara did when she arrived two days prior was to try opening all the windows. They stuck. At least some were painted shut, but the rest simply resisted any change to their routine. Mickey is supposed to get turpentine at the store after he finishes his turn standing vigil at the wake, but Sara doesn’t hold out much hope that airing the house will help. The atmosphere in here will always be as sour as Nonna’s face.

She goes back to the kitchen for a glass of water, staring down at the polished steel sink as the faucet sputters. Why did Valentina and Rosa have to leave like that? She knew they didn’t care for Mickey much, but at least they could have stayed with her until he got back. 

She hates this house. She always hated this house. She thought it was just Nonna, felt guilty for hating her grandmother in such a way, but now Nonna is gone and the fierce _wrongness_ remains. 

Something wet caresses her hand, and she jerks back from her thoughts. Her glass is overflowing. She fumbles with the faucet, but no matter how tight she winds the thing, it still drips. It drips, and the ping of water on metal rings like a bell, accusing.

“It’s not my fault she’s dead,” Sara mutters, then immediately feels like an idiot. There’s no point in talking to a sink.

She grabs the glass and carries it with her up the creaking wooden steps. 

She can’t walk the narrow hallway between the bedrooms without smelling mothballs and cedar. There’s a dark spot on the floor in her grandmother’s room that she can see through the open door: the space where a cedar chest sat for so many years.

Once, Sara had climbed into the chest during a game of hide and seek. She curled her little body amidst the musty quilts and stiff heirloom clothing. It had felt safe, a cozy hiding place, and the minutes had ticked by as time seemed to slow. Where was Mickey? Through the solid walls of the chest, she couldn’t hear him at all, only the sound of her own breathing. The air became thick and warm and closed in on her.

The darkness in the chest was so black. It gathered in the corners and then grew, pressing down. The blankets that had given her comfort began to feel smothering. Suddenly sick of the game, she’d pushed up on the lid of the chest, ready to surrender to Mickey. The lid stopped, jarring against a brass catch she’d forgotten was even there. She pushed again, slamming the lid upward, and the catch jangled, mocking her efforts. She screamed. 

She screamed until her throat was raw and her breath was gone. When Mickey threw open the chest, triumphant, what felt like years later, he found her tear-streaked, red-faced and desperate, her fingernails jagged from clawing at the lid. 

Mickey teased her. He told Nonna she was afraid of the dark. It wasn’t the dark that had scared her the most, though. 

It was the whispers.

Pushing the memory aside, she retreats as she always has to the relative safety of her own bedroom. It’s strange, now, with the big queen bed dominating the space where once she and Mickey slept side by side, but otherwise the room is unchanged. Fading sunlight spills from the windows across the mottled old quilt, giving the bedroom a warm glow.

Sara turns away, and it’s only for a moment. She just needs to shut the door behind her. 

When she turns back, there is someone on her bed.

With a crash, the cup slips from her nerveless fingers, shattering across the floor and splashing her bare feet with water and shards of glass.

The man turns to look at Sara. No, not a man. It’s a woman, dark hair - no, red - no, honey gold, then red again. Sara’s stomach twists, dizzy as he - no, she - smirks, her lips stained a deep burgundy wine. 

“Hello,” she purrs and hikes up her short tunic to cross legs that are long and pale, except when Sara blinks and they twist sickeningly into something inhuman, crooked and covered in dark fur. Then, legs again, and milky white, smooth skin without a trace of hoof.

Sara steps back and feels the wooden door, unyielding against her shoulders. She fumbles for the knob. Something warm and wet is winding a trail down her leg. She should look, find out if it’s water or blood, but she can’t tear her eyes away from the woman lying back on her bed and the way the short, curling black horns peek out from her red hair when she tilts her head.

“Who are you?” Sara asks. She can hear the edge rising in her voice, but can’t slow its climb toward hysteria. “How did you get in here?”

The woman sticks her lower lip out in an exaggerated pout and looks down at her hands, examining nails that are long, sharp. “How?” she asks. “What do you mean, how? You’re the one who called me here.”

“Called you?” Sara gasps as the woman twists her hand and plucks a familiar bit of paper from the air.

Last night, the note had been clutched in Sara’s shaking hands. She read the words, stuttering and halting on the unfamiliar sibilants. 

_“Just read what you can,” Valentina said, waving the torn slip of paper in Sara’s face. “No one will know if you ad-lib. It’s not like this stuff works anyway.”_

_“What’s it going to do again?” Rosa asked, tremulous. “Not anything… bad, right?”_

_“Don’t be such a baby,” Valentina scolded, tugging the end of Rosa’s braids for good measure. “It’s just some junk I got on the internet, something about ‘revealing desire’ or whatever. If it works it’ll tell us Sara wants to get her own place, I bet. Sara’s desire is five cats.”_

_“That’s not true,” Sara hissed, then smoothed out the paper between her hands._

“You called,” the woman says, yanking Sara back to the present. “And here I am.”

She slinks from the bed and advances toward the door as Sara stands frozen in place, staring at the woman’s unnaturally beautiful face so as not to be disturbed by the flickering, distorted aspects of the rest of her.

Up close, she smells of flint and steel and something else, acrid and coppery. She places her hands on the door, fixing Sara in place and sealing the exit, as if Sara could bear to move, as if she could even think of running away. 

One elegant hand reaches up, caressing the line of Sara’s jaw. Her touch is hot and gentle, but edged by razor-like nails which trace along the thin skin beneath Sara’s chin. Sara turns, tilting her head upwards to meet the woman’s blue - green - _yellow_ eyes.

“You wished for fate to fulfill your desires,” the woman says. The hint of a thin, forked tongue flickers behind her teeth at the words, and she leans in, hissing the rest of her question into the shell of Sara’s ear. “What did you expect to get?”

Sara jerks back, and her skull thumps against the wooden door, but the woman’s small smile never shatters.

Had Sara thought she smelled of flint before? Now it’s cinnamon, clove, honey, and wood smoke. The woman tilts her head, and her smile stretches as Sara’s eyes caress the pale flesh revealed where her shoulder slips free of the tunic. 

Sara traces her teeth with her tongue as she finds herself captivated by the shadow of a collarbone. _Touch. Taste. Take._

She drags her eyes back to the woman’s face and the confident smirk now playing across her dark lips. Sara knows she shouldn’t want… but she does. And, she realizes, seeing the tip of a black horn peeking from the red curls once more, she _can_.

“You’re here to... fulfill my desires?” Sara asks.

The woman curls close, tendrils of darkness in her eyes. “All of them,” she whispers, and her breath is hot in Sara’s ear, raising chills along her spine. “Name it, and it’s yours.” 

A bounty of suggestions tumble forward, jostling for space on Sara’s lips - things she always wanted, what she knew was there, and other things, so many others that she never knew were even possible. She reaches up, tangling her fingers in the hair at the base of the woman’s skull to pull her head back. 

“This may take a while,” Sara warns, teeth blunt against the column of the woman’s throat, and she feels the creature tremble against her.


End file.
